


Change

by Maybethings



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic, Qun, Qunari, kithshoks everywhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-08
Updated: 2011-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-02 03:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maybethings/pseuds/Maybethings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sten arrives home to answer the Arishok’s question. Promptfic for Goddessofcheese.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Parting Gifts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/364468) by [Maybethings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maybethings/pseuds/Maybethings). 



He had to close his eyes for just a moment when the ship pulled into port, if only to appreciate everything else fully: the sounds of his native tongue, like thunder and rain long-sought; the taste of salt on his lips; the smell of hearths and brewing tea (and even the seagull droppings, though he would never have told the Warden this.) The restlessness he had felt over the past few weeks on the ocean dissipated in a rush of joy. He was back where he belonged. He was home.

The kithshoks greeted him on the docks—and were then introduced to Gelert, who bounded forward, sniffed their hands, and promptly decided they were friends. They were undecided until Sten told them, in no uncertain terms, that the dog was a worthy warrior and the friendship he gave was not to be trifled with.

They gave him a single night to refresh himself, and in the morning they called him to the Arishok’s chambers. The building was as it always had been, and it cheered Sten’s heart greatly to see the great stone carvings untouched by time, the arrangement of hanging plants only slightly different from when he had received his orders so long ago. “ _Arishokost_ ,” he greeted his leader, these words at least sure after months of Ferelden’s common tongue. “The struggle ends. Victory is in the Qun.”

The man standing before him was not the one who had assigned him to the bas lands. Sten recognised the Arishok’s second, a kithshok temporarily elevated to the man’s seat. Other duties must have called. “ _Shanedan_ , Sten. You are in mourning.” Sten raised his head and nodded, his hair loose and cut short to the base of his skull.

  
“Yes. For my men and my kadan.” He had cut off and burned his braids last night, acknowledging the parts of himself that had been lost, and would stay in such a state of mourning, away from the battlefield, until his hair touched his shoulders again. It wouldn’t be long. His hair had always grown damned fast.

“And how was the beresaad lost?” Well, an Arishok had to be direct. Sten began his report, starting from the day they left.

He left out no failing nor triumph. His words were concise, measured and neutral. He spoke of Fereldan folly—but also their small measure of cunning and courage. And finally, he delivered the answer to the Arishok’s question.

“We were asked ‘What is the Blight’ and I think I have an answer for the Qun,” he said. Up until this point, the Arishok’s second had listened without comment or reaction. “It is a horror no words can seek to encompass. It is a threat that takes nations to contain. It is a darkness that took a single Warden to defeat.”

“There is something new about you,” the kithshok mused, brows knitted as he studied the soldier. He stood before him, a whole man with his soul on his back and new scars upon his breast, yet somehow changed. “You have let your brothers die, and yet—I see pride in your eyes.”

“I do not deny my failure,” Sten returned, evenly. “And I will never deny it to my last day. But my home is here, among my people. I have lived by the Qun. In its name I fought the Blight, alongside the Grey Wardens of Ferelden and their companions. And I will die by it, if you will it so.”

Kithshok glowered down at Sten. He looked calmly back. He had seen darkspawn tear his karashok’s head off bare-handed. He had seen broodmothers, bereskarn, his own kin perverted into fanged horrors of nature. He had seen ataashi, abominations, archdemons. Nobody could deny that he had fought as hard as any Qunari could claim to fight.

“I do not wish another death,” the leader finally growled. “There will be no need to fall upon your blade—the Qunari will not be left without their beresaad. All one of him.”

“I will serve.”

“Once you put your hair in braids again, you will,” the kithshok grumbled, but without heat. “Until then, you will teach the antaam Ferelden’s ways. They will have to be brought to the Qun eventually.”

“It shall be done,” Sten said, but there was a half-beat of hesitation before those words. Kithshok picked up on it.

“You hesitate, Sten of the Beresaad. Were there bas worth saving in those lands?”

Sten swore he could hear the Warden’s high, raucous laugh, and imagined her standing before the Arishok, uncowed as always. “There was only one.”

“And was there knowledge worth retrieving?”

Sten nodded, a little more vehemently, and his hand went to the back of his neck and the uneven prickles of his shorn braids. “Steelwork, and that of molding dragonskin into armour. And recipes the genaaran might find of use.” For the first time that day, he smiled, relishing a memory close to his heart.

One day he would tell them of the Warden. Perhaps not today, but soon.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Taste of Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/387080) by [Maybethings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maybethings/pseuds/Maybethings)




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